Maybe former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern knew something.
When Ardern said she had nothing left in the tank, she might have meant she just couldn’t be bothered dealing with errant ministers.
Instead, relatively new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has been left to deal with an increasing number of ministers who apparently do not understand the basic requirements of their jobs. It is clear Hipkins is getting frustrated.
The latest to test his patience is Transport Minister Michael Wood – although he has been stood down from that role – who at one time was one of Labour’s top performers and even touted as a future leader. Possibly no more.
Without raking over the details, it is hard to explain – and Wood cannot – why the minister did not sell shares he held in Auckland Airport the day he became a minister, if not before.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and stood-down Transport Minister Michael Wood in happier times.
The Cabinet Manual is clear about identifying conflicts of interest, saying they might be direct or indirect and a minister should consider all types of interests when assessing whether any of their personal interests might conflict with, or be perceived to conflict with, their ministerial responsibilities. On the matter of pecuniary interests, it says a conflict of interest might arise if it could be reasonably perceived a minister stands to gain or lose from any decisions they make.
When it comes to managing conflicts of interest the manual has this advice: “Where a conflict of interest is significant and pervasive, the minister may need to divest themselves of the interest.”
Sell, sell, sell
In other words, sell your shares, which is what the Cabinet Office advised Wood to do on no less than 12 occasions over a couple of years. Each time Wood told the office he was in the process of doing so. On each occasion he was not.
It comes too after he only belatedly declared the shares in Parliament’s register of interests in 2022, although he had declared the shares to the Cabinet Office when he became a minister. Now, too, Newsroom Pro managing editor Jonathan Milne has reported he specifically asked Wood did he have any interests beyond those he declared in the 2021 register – the Auckland Airport shares were not disclosed that year – and Wood replied “none”. Wood’s non-compliance with the parliamentary register before 2022 is also now under investigation.
Michael Wood's shareholding in Auckland Airport has got him into trouble.
All of this is inexplicable. Wood is a competent and well-meaning minister, but he has repeatedly ignored the Cabinet Manual and previously been less than forthcoming about his shareholding.
According to National’s acting Auckland spokesperson Paul Goldsmith the latest revelation from Newsroom means Hipkins must sack Wood from the Cabinet, not just stand him down as transport minister.
So far, Hipkins has remained loyal to his minister, but Wood will remain a point of attack for the Opposition as long as he remains a minister. As it is, it is clear he has breached the Cabinet Manual, particularly given the dozen reminders he got to remove the conflict of interest by divesting his shares. He is now in the process of doing that, but it all comes too late.
He joins Stuart Nash, former Labour MP Meka Whaitiri, Kiri Allan and Jan Tinetti in a growing line of ministers who have given grist to National’s attacks on the “coalition of chaos”.
When Hipkins took over as leader Labour bounced in the polls – and still remains neck and neck in the polls with National. But incidents of this nature – even if the public do not follow them in detail – do tend to take the lustre off a political party. It surely makes Labour’s job of trying to win a third term that much more difficult.
How many more embarrassments?
And, as NBR presenter Grant Walker asks, how many more ministers will embarrass Labour before the election? On the present rate he reckons possibly another four.
Walker is not too impressed either with recommendations from the Independent Electoral Review panel that the voting age be dropped to 16, that all prisoners be allowed to vote and that the party vote threshold drop to 3.5%. He points out public polls have shown the majority of New Zealanders oppose lowering the voting age.
The independent electoral review panel has recommended dropping the voting age to 16.
Maybe, but what would be the harm of putting that to a referendum, just as the panel has suggested referendum on increasing the parliamentary term to four years.
In terms of the proposed 3.5% party vote threshold Walker asks whether we want a conspiracy party to be in Parliament determining which party will lead the Government. That is probably not a likely outcome and in proposing 3.5% the panel made the point a party would still need to win 100,000 votes – not an insubstantial number – to get into Parliament.
Meanwhile, at the weekend the Act Party, which is proposing to take a sledgehammer to government bureaucracy, announced it wanted to set up another bureaucracy to get rid of regulations.
Then this week the National Party released its infrastructure policy, including plans to turn Crown Infrastructure Partners into a new infrastructure agency and to introduce value capture taxes to help pay for infrastructure.
As previously announced, National will also dump the Government’s policies around rental housing by reducing the bright line test from 10 to two years and bringing back interest deductibility for property investors. But what happens in a National-led Cabinet when ministers – many of whom own investment properties – come to make decisions on that. Is that a conflict of interest? They might want to read the Cabinet manual carefully.
For his part, Hipkins must be looking forward to next week when Parliament goes into recess. He will at least escape the indignity of Question Time as he has had to deal with the fallout over the Michael Wood affair. Both he and Wood might also take the weekend to ponder what happens next.
